Letters
by nathan-p
Summary: Someone's been writing Hisoka letters. Look, don't look at me like that. It's a New Year's thing, I s'pose. Very short chapters, written to Hisoka in the form of letters.
1. Chapter 1

Note from Author: Decided to upload this on a lark on the cusp of 2008. Suppose you could call this dark!Hisoka, but that's a total lie. Just call it a "Happy Friggin' New Year's" present from Nathan, and count yourself lucky it wasn't worse.

Oh, right, and even though it's more OC-centric than you can imagine, I don't Teh Own Hisoka, or the bit about it being turtles all the way down, or even the concept of empathy.

Funny, I see myself taking this down shortly. Whatever. It's New Year's Day. I should be in bed. Good night.

* * *

Sometimes I can hear the walls.

Empathy's a bit of a bitch that way, isn't it? It comes and it goes, but it always takes you by surprise. Like when I was taking the train and I realized that the visual world had gone away, replaced by that . . . _other_ world.

Everyone does it differently. I knew a kid once who saw thoughts; if he focused, he could hear them. He said that I had a pretty color for someone with my personality -- midnight blue, with silvery streaks. And the girl who smelt intentions -- cinnamon was love, and hot pepper was murder, she told me. Apparently I smell like an enchilada -- faintly spicy, but mostly like baked goods.

But you understand what I mean. Everyone feels it differently. For me, it's not sight or smell -- nor is it taste. It's more like telepathy or -- well, everything happens in my mind's eye, really.

See, most of us who are cursed choose to help people. Me?

Well, you get three guesses, honey, and the first two don't count.


	2. Chapter 2

A wise man once asked me if I had ever wondered if there were empaths who used their powers for evil. I almost sprayed Coke out my nose. I wanted to shout in his face: Of course there are, numbnuts! For every curse there's someone who takes advantage of it!

Then again, I didn't want to give myself away, so I just said that yes, there probably were, but who knows, it wasn't like they'd tell anyone. He laughed and left me alone.

Since you've gotten this far, you're probably smart enough to have realized I'm one of the few cursed who doesn't work for the "good" people. You could say I'm evil, call me a mass murderer -- whatever you like. I don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

See, my business is in blackmail. Don't laugh. It's simple if you're like me.

Most people can learn to focus their talents -- since a telepath who can't focus can't stand being around more than two people at once, and a pyrokinetic who can't focus will wind up lighting the building when he wants to light his date's cigarette. For me, it's part of my job.

What I do is I just stand a little bit too close to someone on the train. I take a moment, and I just flick through the memories in his head. It's easy once you get used to it -- like turning the pages in a book. Blackmail is the simplest -- your most embarrassing secrets are the ones you brood over the most, and so it's easy to flip through your memories to those.

And with a moment's work, I've got good blackmail information on someone important. Doesn't matter who, really -- mostly I work freelance, but occasionally someone asks me to do something special. I get train tickets in the mail and a picture of the person they want me to get. I take the train, I find them, I get the information, and I write their letter up.

The letter's the really fun part for me -- I just say that I know the horrible secret he's keeping from everyone, and if he doesn't pay up I'll tell everyone he knows. Except, of course, it sounds much better. I suppose you know how blackmail works, then -- he pays up, I never bother him again. Except sometimes I send them little notes, so he doesn't forget I'm there.

So that's what I do with my talent -- I use it for evil, you could say. I'm using it, anyway. Drives me nuts to see someone who's obviously talented but doesn't do shit-all with it. Like the guy I once saw who was obviously a good telekinetic. What was he doing? Bank teller. I wanted to grab him by the lapels, shake him, and tell him to start using the talent he was given.

Of course, not everyone's as lucky as me. I mean, how many people do you know who get to use telekinesis on the job?

Empathy's way easier.


	3. Chapter 3

So where were we when I left off?

Well, I suppose you're wondering exactly how I'd defend myself if someone came after me. I don't carry a gun -- too risky.

Instead, I'm the weapon.

You remember how my curse works -- I can look through your mind like I were looking through a book. It works both ways, as if I were a doorway. I can look into your head, and I can make you look into my head.

Well, usually this is just terribly boring -- besides the blackmail bit I'm basically anyone else, with all my boring little predilections. The fun part is making it _not_ boring.

There are two ways to do that.

One: set up a feedback loop. You make the person look at your memory of going through their head, and then you make them look at their memory of looking at your memory of looking through their head. Doesn't matter how many times you do it, really -- the human mind can only take so much infinity before it self-destructs.

Two (and more fun) goes like this: Give them a horrific memory.

I see a lot of horror films for that reason. It's easy once you get the knack -- you just sit and soak up the little niggling _wrong_ parts. It's a little easier with books, because it's a bit hard to film a seven-sided triangle.

Method Two is basically Method One, but with a brain-smashing image instead of just the endless loop.

For most people, there are different things that just stop their mind dead in its tracks. Like the one man for whom it was a parrot, composed of impossible angles -- I never did figure that one out. Or the lady whose mind shut down when presented with the possibility of a playing card with the wrong king on it.

It's different for everyone, see? And so all I have to do is flick through your brain, and find something that disturbs you, and then I go find that something, and I'm done.

See, I don't _need_ to carry a gun, because I'm the weapon.


	4. Chapter 4

Y' know, the stereotypical empath is either a weepy teenager, shell-shocked by the world, or a fragile, damaged young lady who doesn't talk at all for the same reason. Which is why, if some smartass were to figure out that people keep getting blackmailed with information no one but them could have known and put together a crazy theory that an empath did it, I'd be totally outside suspicion. Nice guy, early twenties, maybe just out of college, probably lives with his parents. Helps old ladies across the street. Et cetera.

They'd be looking for, well, a ninety-eight pound weakling. Or the young lady who never leaves the house. You know the stereotypes, don't you? Everyone does; empaths are a very popular cliché.

I read a lot of popular fiction, y' know. It's a fun way to pass the time. I don't spend much time actually _working_; like I said, a lot of my time goes towards picking up creepy things and just bumming around. You wouldn't _believe_ the crap that passes for supernatural fiction these days! Myself, I've started shifting towards more horror or science fiction now. I miss the old Stephen King.

But it's ridiculous. Popular fiction conditions everyone to believe that all empaths are wimps, and everyone who blackmails people is terrible.

Nothing is ever just black and white. You of all people should know that.


	5. Chapter 5

I've often found myself wondering what I was meant to do. Everyone is born with a purpose to accomplish in life; something that they're meant to do before they die. Some people were meant to write novels, or to lead revolutions, or to run the till at a shop. Because fate lines us up where we need to be, _when_ we need to be. It uses us, and then it tosses us aside.

People never die young, or before their time; they die when fate decides to take them. When they have served their purpose on Earth.

Go ahead, accuse me of only trying to justify what I do. You're clever, I'm sure you can rationalize that. But it would be wrong, because I've seen fate in motion.

Most talented people eventually run across it, in their time on Earth; even a few untalented people brush against it. Most of them ignore it, like they'd ignore a homeless man on the pavement. Some of them feel it, though, like walking through a spiderweb; fate is a creepy feeling.

Talented people like myself usually experience it as an urge -- a feeling that they should use their talent on someone specifically. They have to act on it. It's not a question of wanting to act on that person -- it's a question of being required to. I'm sure you understand.

I think that maybe these letters (or perhaps it's all just one) are what I was meant to write. That I'm meant to be part of some greater thing that already exists, somewhere.

I already know where I'm supposed to send these, after I finish them. To someone I've never met. To you.

Have you heard the story about the old lady and the scientist?

Well, the scientist is at a party, and he's talking about how the universe just keeps on going, forever. And it's getting bigger.

Once he's finished talking, this old lady comes up to him and asks him, if that's so, then what holds the Earth up.

He smiles and says that it's not precisely "up", but gravity keeps it where it is, and asks her what she thinks.

She says that the Earth rests on the back of a turtle.

He asks what the turtle's standing on.

She smiles and says, "It's turtles all the way down."

To what? Where does it end?

It ends when fate is finished with me, and casts me aside.


	6. Chapter 6

So I guess that's the end, then. I wonder who you are. I know that you must be an empath, because fate tells me you're like me. But obviously you're not like me. All you have to do is look at the names...

Kurosaki Hisoka... whoever you are... I hope this finds you well. Whereever it may find you. And if that's after fate has finished with you, then someone who's not done yet needs to know:

_Is_ it turtles all the way down?

Send a message. You'll know where to find me.


End file.
